


What Flesh Felt

by thuvia ptarth (thuviaptarth)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Salvage, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-07-07
Updated: 2001-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thuviaptarth/pseuds/thuvia%20ptarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I'm not me,</i> he said, and when you touched his hand it cut you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Flesh Felt

Orchids, lilies, roses: dying smells like shit and fever-sweat, but death smells like flowers. You feel slightly nauseated by the scent, or maybe by the sidelong glances. Second funeral this week. The glances were sympathetic at the last one.

+*+

The invitation came in the mail, a smudged handwritten card listing the date and address. There was a folded sheet of paper tucked inside the envelope, but you didn't have to take it out to know it had a map on one side and driving instructions on the other. Three days ago, you'd sat in your living room with a stack of identical photocopies and folded them in fours. It was the same mortuary, of course, the same cemetery, the same directions for everyone in town.

You knew it was a mistake. Some out-of-town cousin must have cobbled the invitation list together out of Curt's address book and not recognized your name.

You put the card and the unfolded map and the torn envelope down on the dining room table, because it didn't seem right to just throw them away.

Marie Delario called two hours later to say that she wanted you to come.

"I know it wasn't Ray," she said, and you could tell from the determination in her voice that she'd had to fight for this.

You twisted the telephone cord around your fingers and listened to her wheeze.

"Marie," you said finally, "it was."

"No, honey," and her voice was gentle, the voice of one of the neighborhood women who always looked out for the kids, the voice of the woman who'd brought you tuna casserole before Ray's funeral, and God knew how many meals before that, when Ray was in and out of the hospital and you were on family leave to take care of him and everybody was pretending that he wasn't going to die.

"He was sick," Curtis Delario's mother said. "Those chemicals made him crazy and sick. I know Ray would never have wanted to hurt anybody."

_I'm not me,_ he'd said when you found him, metal stubble on his cheeks and his face half torn away, and you still thought it was a miracle, joy spilling out through your hands and reaching for him.

You told Marie you'd come so you could hang up before your voice started to shake. You'd waited too long, though; you had to lock your knees against the trembling and stand there a while, staring out the window, listening to your own breathing and the sound of your blood pounding inside your head. The light outside was clear and cold and too bright for winter.

Eventually you made yourself let go of the phone cord. You'd gripped it so tightly that the loops had left spiral marks on your fingers, white before the blood rushed back in. You flexed your hand to get the sensation back faster and the scratches on your palm stung. _I'm not me,_ he'd said, and when you touched his hand it cut you.

+*+

There's a reception line, like at a wedding. At Ray's funeral, of course, you stood at the head of the line, mouthing--words, noises; if someone had offered congratulations instead of condolences, you would have said thank you automatically, given the same mechanical smile. Curtis had stood stiff and uncomfortable at your left shoulder, tugging at his suit every now and then.

It's so cold now. You pull your sweater closer, hunch your shoulders. Ahead of you in line, Vera McCall shifts away as if afraid of contamination. You try to remember if anyone has spoken to you since you entered. You wonder if your neighbors have heard about Owen Harris after all, and how you tried to help Ray, or if this is just on Curt's account. You suppose Curt's account is enough. You're not still not sure why Ray killed him, or Harry, or why he started to kill Owen Harris, or why he stopped. When he finally let you look in his eyes, there was nothing there, not anger, not happiness; you might as well have been looking at glass.

Maybe Marie is right. Maybe it wasn't really Ray anymore. Maybe it was just revenge by rote, because whatever he'd become didn't know what else to do.

When you arrive at Marie, she reaches out for your hands. Her soft crepe skin is loose over the bony knobs of her knuckles. You're careful not to press too hard.

Exhaustion-bruised eyes, slumped shoulders; Marie manages a smile for you anyway. "Nora," she says, "sweetie. I'm so glad you came."

"Marie," you say. You glance over her shoulder at her daughter Josie, who stands so tense it almost hurts to look at her. She's angry, you think. You try to remember how being angry felt.

"I'm so sorry about Curt," you say to both of them. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

Josie nods without meeting your eyes. Marie squeezes your hands, so lightly it feels like cottonballs brushing against your skin.

"We've both lost someone, honey," Marie says. "We'll have to help each other."

You nod; gestures are always useful when you can't think of anything to say. Your mouth is bitter with the iron taste of blood, and it takes you a moment to realize that it's not imaginary. Somehow you've bitten your tongue.

You didn't feel it at first when you touched Ray, either. For a moment you thought the blood on your fingers was just his; for a moment you thought that the pain was your body flinching from his hurt. Then you felt the pain for real.

+*+

Your parents and your older brother died in a car crash when you were twenty-three. You had friends, though, or your family did; in Muncie it didn't make much difference which. The neighborhood was good to you. You remember crying in Marie Delario's arms that it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, and how she rocked you and said, _No, baby. It's not._ You've tried to forget, over the years, that you cried harder on purpose just to hear her call you baby like that.

By the time Ray got sick you knew the world wasn't about fair unless you made it be. So you nursed him through the night sweats, the nausea, the hot flashes and the chills; you wrote to the veterans' associations and researched Gulf War Syndrome and demanded doctors who knew what they were doing and tried to find a lawyer who'd help you file suit; you kissed your husband's cheek and held his hand and pretended you didn't notice the smell. You don't have words for the thing you realized in those last weeks, how you loved his breaking body, how his body wasn't what you loved at all.

You don't have words for the other thing, either: how you hated having to take care of him, how sometimes you hated him for getting sick. You were sitting there hating him when he died, murmuring to him and brushing back his hair.

You guess it's just as well. Even if you had the words, there isn't anybody you could tell them to.

+*+

You let go of Marie's hands and murmur something to Josie, or she murmurs something to you; you never look at each other, and you wouldn't swear that what either of you says is actually English. You brush past her, and the two of you are very careful not to touch.

It won't be long till service starts. There weren't many people on line behind you; you'd been careful to come as late as you could without being rude. You find yourself a seat at the end of a row so it won't be as obvious when everyone leaves the one next to you empty.

You sit neatly, ankles together, hands in your lap, and close your eyes, hoping to rest. Behind your eyelids you see the metal splinters pricking out of Ray's skin, and the blood smearing across your fingers. The blood smearing across your fingers, his, yours. Yours.

You wish this were all over. Absently, you massage the back of one hand with the other. You can feel the hardness beneath the skin now, denser than human flesh. If Marie's grasp had been any tighter, she couldn't have missed it.

It doesn't hurt, exactly, at least not in the places which have already changed; you might even say the numbness is a relief. You know what comes next, the nausea and the chills and the slow choking of breath. You just don't know what comes after that.

Or if you want anything to.

+*+

"And you know, I wonder if in time I'll forget what flesh felt like--my own flesh, when I touched it like this--and the metal against the metal will be so much the same I'll never even notice?"--C.L. Moore, "No Woman Born"

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: Many thanks to cofax, JET, and Pteropod for advice, handholding, and a helpful impatience. And to Iocaste for trying.  
> Research: Diane Byers, cofax, JET, Kemystre, and Shannono all answered my call for research help on this story. That I ended up not using any of the information provided shouldn't be taken as a reflection on its quality. Thanks, guys.


End file.
